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If you were a gamer in the early ‘80s, you’ve no doubt played ColecoVision—the short-lived console that brought arcade games to your living room. Well, get ready for a nostalgia hurricane, because Coleco is back on the scene with a new home console—and it’ll play actual game cartridges. The hero of this comeback story is…
OS X lets you take command of all the wifi networks your laptop has logged in its memory, so your machine won’t try and connect to the next-door coffee shop before your home network. Here’s how to trim down the list and make sure you’re connecting to the right networks first. Open up the trusty…
Two things: One, those two-wheeled self-balancing teen transporters you’ve heard so much about lately should not be called “hoverboards,” as they do not hover. Two, everyone should stop buying them. The United States Postal Service just banned quote-unquote hoverboards on airmail flights since the batteries have a naughty tendency to catch on fire. The move…
The world has faced down some incredibly large-scale natural disasters lately—and the wreckage they left in their wake has been considerable. But the one that is most threatening to our food supply is a natural disaster that has been unfolding very slowly. The FAO recently took a look at the toll natural disasters have taken…
It’s time to reflect on the most futuristic breakthroughs and developments of the past year. This year’s crop features a slew of remarkable scientific and technological achievements, from an actual working hoverboard to cyborgized brains. Here are 18 predictions that finally came true in 2015. AI Warnings Went Prime Time Artificial intelligence isn’t a threat…
With Android Wear smartwatches now looking the part and gaining new features on a regular basis, it’s a good time to hop aboard the Google-powered smartwatch bandwagon. There are plenty of professionally made watch faces to choose from, but you can just build your own using the apps listed below—zero coding experience required. Of course,…
A nostalgic Google researcher recently flexed his C coding skills and built a fully functional Commodore Amiga 500 emulator for Chrome. You can try the realistic software here. It’s good, geeky fun. Of course, it’s also a handy way to flaunt some of Chrome’s lesser known features. The Amiga emulator was built with Native Client,…
It’s easy to hate selfie sticks; they’re the seedy underbelly of the camera-equipped smartphones we carry around. But it’s really hard to hate on the brilliantly-engineered Stikbox that hides a telescoping 28-inch long selfie stick on the back of your mobile device. Like their more respectable cousin the tripod, selfie sticks have been collapsing for…
Here’s an old Imperial Stormtrooper from the original Star Wars trilogy turning itself into a new First Order Stormtrooper from Star Wars: The Force Awakens in one sweet GIF. Made by GadgetLove, they say that the “size difference of the two designs makes it look as if they are breathing in and out while evolving.”…
Time Magazine has put together an eye-popping chart showing every execution performed in the United States since 1770, and how each deed was done. The interactive chart, which can be found here, was compiled by Chris Wilson with help from Emily Maltby and Lon Tweeten. When browsing the chart, mouseover actions call up the figures…
It really doesn’t take much. Lobster, a little mayo, and a split top hot dog bun is all that you need to make a truly authentic lobster roll. According to Eater, Red Hook Lobster Pound in New York uses knuckle and claw meat from 1.5-ish pound lobsters, Country Kitchen frankfurt rolls griddled with butter, homemade…
Ever since Star Wars first hit theaters back in 1977, fans have been asking themselves: “when are we going to get a remote control R2-D2 mini fridge with a built-in hi-def video projector?” The answer to that question, it turns out, is at the Consumer Electronics Show next month in Vegas. Just in time for…
The HoloLens headset from Microsoft is the world’s first untethered wearable that generates holograms before your eyes. It’s been nearly a year since we first strapped on a prototype, and as the tech goliath prepares to unleash a first batch of units to developers in the coming months, I was invited to check out just…
Most types of bionic vision rely on using large parts of the existing human visual system to restore sight. But a new technique will simply feed the output from a digital camera directly into the brain. New Scientist reports that a new kind of bionic eye will “bypass most of the visual system entirely.” The…
If 2015 really was the year of the emoji, then what better way to round it off than a speech-to-emoticon app that allows anyone to communicate using the stupid little images. Siri and Cortana, eat your heart out. SpeakEmoji claims to help translate “grown-up speak into cool emoji messages to help adults engage with their…
The next time someone refers to a horror movie as “bloodcurdling,” they might actually be kinda right. A new study shows that the fear experienced when watching scary movies is in fact associated with an increase in clotting agents in the blood. A team of researchers from the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands…
Larry King has a flip phone, misses typewriters, and thinks that snail mail is a minor miracle. And don’t get him started on taking your iPhone along to dinner. He explains why to Conan in the video below. [Conan]
Fog can be a pain in the ass, but it might also yield more profound problems. At least in California, where researchers have discovered that coastal fog can contain peculiarly large concentrations of mercury. Popular Science reports that scientists from UC Santa Cruz have discovered that the concentration of a form of mercury called monomethylmercury…
This protective lens filter might look like any other, but it’s got an invisible secret. Making use of a new kind of clear ceramic, it’s ten times tougher than most conventional protective filters, and therefore able to keep your lens perfectly safe. Developed by Sigma, the clear glass ceramic is made using a special heat…
Whatsapp has proven to be insanely popular in Brazil, as the number-one most used app in the country. But that doesn’t matter to a Brazilian court, which has ordered a 48-hour blockade of the service over an injunction from a mysterious third party. The court has ordered Brazil’s telecoms companies to block access to the…
